XXHighEnd

For the 'Best Vinyl Rig' thread, I took a couple of needle drops at 16/44.1 in order to compare with CD rips of the same music. It seemed to me that recording in 16/44.1 was the fairest way of making the LP-CD comparison. It's pretty unbelievable, but I've never really compared any 16/44.1 needle drops to their hires equivalents. Well, I've now done this.

I recorded Talk Talk's 'I Believe in You' (see 'Best Vinyl Rig' thread) in 16/44.1, 24/88.2 and 24/176.4. I listened to these against each other on my main system last night. I listened to them again this morning on my office system (which includes my second NOS1a). In both cases, I was using double-octo ArcPrediction to take the rate up to 705.6KHz. And...

I prefer the 16/44.1 needle drop! To me, this is pretty unbelievable. I really thought the hires files would easily better the 16/44.1, but they don't. The sound is thicker. The air is missing. I'm almost inclined to say that it's the typical sigma-delta sound.

There's been a bit of talk over at CA about my ADC and whether it's a genuine PCM 24 bit ADC. I'm now starting to think that it was optimised for 16/44.1, which makes perfect sense as it was designed for the specific purpose of producing 16/44.1 HDCD files.

I'm going to do some more testing of various sample rates and have a number of other PCM and DSD recorders here too. I'll use this thread to share my thoughts. But any initial comments from anyone would be most welcome.

Mani.

Hi Mani,

No real useful comments from me I'm afraid; looks "dangerous" though. Good that in all cases your NOS1a behaves the same electrically.

Peter

Hi Mani,

Peter will grunt about this but why not ask him to study the possibility of making a filter that will mimic the euphonic sounds that playing vinyl generates ? :)  :grin:

Alain

You want to be banned or something ?
;)

Hi,

Made some listening tests (for the conversion using Manis „favourite“  :teasing: unit MR-2000S with the poor power supply)  with the Dave Grusin LP/CD. The identical source is the masterband on 1989.

1)   Best SQ  on my system is with the CD at 16/44,1, with the best resolution,  , a „wall of sound“ stage and a very, very small tendency to a harshness.

2)   Second best (SQ is 99,5% of the first)   is the highres LP conversion 24/96, which has more air, a „wall of sound“ stage, but less resolution by a small margin. A nice relaxing analogue sound with no listening fatigue.

3)   Last one on my system is the LP conversion 16/44,1, where the soundstage is in the centre mainly, much less air,  an accentuated bass and the SQ is a little grainy.

In other words, every system sounds different  due to ………. .

Joachim

Well, I intend to find out for sure. I have the following ADCs to hand:

- Pacific Microsonics Model Two [up to 24/192]
- Tascam DA-3000 [up to 24/192 and DSD128]
- Korg MR1000 (with Paul Hynes linear power supply  :P) [up to 24/192 and DSD128]
- RME FF800 [up to 24/192]
- Motu 896 MKII [up to 24/192]

It's going to be a big job getting through all this, but I'm determined to do this. I'm intrigued to know how these units sound compared to each other, at the various sample rates. And also whether DSD128 really is as good as some people say it is. But already, I know that the PMII at 16/44.1 is going to be hard to beat.

Mani.

I will need to ask someone around here (probably a store that offers this) to digitize a few albums I did not find in CD format or were a disaster in CD format. I tried my best to replace all my vinyls, but...

2 of these LPs are from a band called "Charlie":
- No Second Chance
- Lines
These have a big problem with the treble - it is almost totally gone, as if the master tapes were in a very bad shape when they were finally transferred from analog to digital.

Another is "Babe Ruth", with the album "Kid's Stuff". Not really known, not the original band neither, but the song "Since You Went Away" is nice and I really want to get it...

But ok, I will not ask for a special filter ;) I prefer to stay with the "gang" :)

Alain